By Carolyn Hughes, BA Hons, CQSW — Who do you want to be? If you’ve experienced traumas that have left you numb, or the pressures of an image-conscious, success-driven society are forcing you to live your life trying to be someone you’re not, perhaps it’s time to start finding out who you really are. As…

Anorexia nervosa is an unusually deadly mental disorder centered on a fixation with thinness and weight loss. Current guidelines allow doctors to diagnose the disorder in individuals whose body weight falls below 85 percent of expected norms. However, according to the results of a new report published in September 2013 in the American Academy of…

Sadie was like most 10 year old girls—she liked swimming and soccer, horses and rainbows, and catching fireflies in the summertime. As a fourth-grade student, she was especially concerned about spelling bees and cared very much about keeping her straight-A record. She’d gotten a C once on a social studies test and her parents would…

Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder characterized by such things as a severely distorted body image, a dysfunctional obsession with staying thin, and excessive restrictions on food and calorie intake. Teenagers and adults recovering from the disorder often experience a spike in their levels of anxiety that coincide with a healthy increase in their body…

Part One in a two-part series. Ask any parents if they are concerned about keeping their kids safe from the ravages of alcoholism and they’ll surely say yes. But many parents, perhaps unwittingly, are laying the groundwork for alcohol misuse and abuse among their children. As a parent, you play a more important role in…

The second in a two-part series. Part One: How Your Behavior Influences Your Child You child’s future relationship with alcohol is cultivated in the home. You may be unwittingly setting the stage for future alcohol problems with these behaviors. Drunkenness and irresponsibility with alcohol. We’re all human, we all have a little too much at…

Using stimulants to get ahead is not a new idea. Drugs that give you energy, even just caffeine have been used and abused for decades by people who need more energy, who need to stay awake, and who need to focus to get something done. However, we may be facing a new epidemic among young…

Adolescence is a time of life where young people are encountering many types of changes in their lives. Besides physical maturation, adolescents are also pushing the limits of independence and leaving elementary school for middle school, where increased expectations and responsibilities often results in new stress.

A new study of adolescents with major depressive disorder found that almost all the participants recovered from their depressive episode after treatment, but nearly half of them relapsed within five years. Females were at a much higher risk of having another major depressive episode, according to the study by researchers at Duke University Medical Center.

The National Survey on Drug Use and Health found that from 2008 to 2009, there was a 9 percent increase in people ages 12 and over who currently use marijuana. The average age of first-time use decreased to 17, which means more people are starting to use marijuana at earlier ages.